


Sun Spot

by etacorvi



Category: Naruto
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Our boy Shika needs a NAP, POV Nara Shikamaru, Sleep, Sleepiness, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:28:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29936907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etacorvi/pseuds/etacorvi
Summary: Somehow, Shikamaru’s favorite place for a peaceful, uninterrupted afternoon nap had become the carpeted floor in Sakura’s living room.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Nara Shikamaru, Haruno Sakura/Nara Shikamaru
Comments: 6
Kudos: 87





	Sun Spot

Somehow, Shikamaru’s favorite place for a peaceful, uninterrupted afternoon nap had become the carpeted floor in Sakura’s living room. 

It’s an odd realisation to have, looking back, since for much of their formative years, Shikamaru and Sakura had never been the closest of their generation of Rookies. These days Shikamaru is bogged down by the duties of being the Hokage’s aide, and from what he hears from Tsunade, Sakura has taken the hospital by storm with a sheer tenacity and outspoken vigor that came with being an apprentice to Konoha’s godaime hokage. 

He hadn’t spoken to the kunoichi in weeks despite knowing the fact that  _ neither _ of them had left the village in months. Sure he’s seen her in passing, but beyond distant greetings from afar? The both of them are typically too swamped in the work day to have an actual _ conversation,  _ which, frankly, if Ino wasn’t off traipsing about on missions out of village, she would likely diagnose it as some sort of social tragedy. 

He might agree with her on that. 

But Ino is not blind—she’s best friends with Sakura and has known Shikamaru since they were in diapers—and somehow, through some workings of insane magic and probably unethical abuses of privilege and rank that Shikamaru  _ refuses _ to contemplate even how she manages it just for the sheer claim of plausible deniability, there is a day when all of them are in village and not bound by their duties. 

Ino wrangles all of them together on the guise of a housewarming party for Sakura, even though Shikamaru is well aware of the fact that Sakura has made herself at home at the new apartment for several weeks now - the paperwork for a change of address for personnel had crossed his desk ages ago. He doesn’t know how Ino orchestrates the whole affair, if it's something that she’s been working on for weeks or months, or if Sakura’s move was simply just the nearest excuse for a gathering, but somehow he doesn’t even know it's happening until the day of. 

He’s in his office even though its supposed to be a rare day off for him — a chunin had showed up at his place on the Nara estate with the news that some incompetent airheads had just about lost their minds with his absence and Shikamaru had begrudgingly found himself back at the office to knock some heads together and get the place back into a state of calm. 

Shikamaru has only just escaped the office for a shady spot on the roof for a quick nap when his intentions are brought to a halt by a familiar chakra signature flaring in it’s approach to his hideaway. It’s only because he knows it’s Chouji that he doesn’t immediately abscond with a shunshin for some other quiet place - his damned employees keep on finding his quiet places and frankly, Shikamaru is running frightfully low on hideaways he can catch a moment of peace in the middle of the day. 

He lets himself be kidnapped from the rooftop by his childhood friend and brother in arms, and it really says something that he’d rather escape to a party of the most boisterous people he knows than be dragged back to his office. He’s sure it’ll be troublesome but kami be damned if he’d choose the insanity that is his office over friends he hasn’t seen in far too long. 

He puts up a faint argument, even though he’s already made his mind up about going, and lets Choji try and convince him to come, because honestly, it’s entertaining. ( _ “Come on, Shika! If I don’t bring you back Ino said she’ set Sai out to get you!”  _ Hell if Shikamaru had been against the idea, the threat of Ino’s boyfriend  _ certainly _ would have got him moving. Slippery bastard.)

And so, an hour later Shikamaru finds himself freshly showered and being shoved through the door to a party without a housewarming gift for a woman he hasn’t properly seen in months, despite the fact they live in the same village and run in the same circles. 

The apartment is full of lively conversation and jibes, recollections of childhood memories and tom foolery abounds. Chouji has pulled some strings and stocked the kitchen with a buffet of food for all the ninja, and Kiba turns up with several kegs of beer. ( _ “Listen Sakura, not all of us plebians are cut out for your Shishou’s sake!” _ )

Everything, the domestic chaos of it all, brings a warmth to Shikamaru’s chest, a nostalgic bliss and comfort to  _ everything  _ and he basks in the easy revelry of it all as the hours pass. He’s found a seat on the carpet, leaning up against the glass wall of the sliding door to the balcony with a mug filled with something  _ other  _ than coffee for once. There’s a lazy haze of sheer contentedness that settles in him as he looks upon them all, and when his gaze catches on a pair of jade green eyes, he knows from the easy fondness to her gaze that she’s savoring the moments just as much as he is. She’s leaning softly against the kitchen’s countertop with an ease to her shoulders, free from a tension that he knows he’s mirrored for months. 

They say nothing; they are across the room from one another, but when he raises his mug to her with a nod, she raises her sake glass to him with a soft smile, one he returns all too easily.   
  


-  
  


At some point Shikamaru ends up lying on the floor in a light doze, idly listening to the quiet babble and chatter, watching the clouds roll on by through the shifting colors of a sun setting sky. The sliding door to the balcony has been cracked open at some point, presumably to get fresh air into the crowded apartment, and the soft mountain breeze that carries all the scents of the late spring blooms— it washes over him like a warm hug and he doesn’t fight the lull of sleep.

When he next wakes, the apartment is peacefully quiet with the early rays of morning light cresting through the window, and there’s a light blanket thrown across his shoulders.

  
-  
  


It takes a little bit to arrange, but some days later he locates a housewarming gift for her: a bottle of sake he knows she’s fond of that he stows away in a sealing scroll. There’s a window in her kitchen that he remembers - one with a little shelf full of empty sake bottles repurposed as vases for herbs and flower buds, the glitter of colored glass sending fractals of light alight on the ceiling. 

It doesn’t take much effort to find an aimless genin to deliver the scroll for a meager D-rank’s pay.  
  


-  
  


It’s a particularly chaotic day the next time Shikamaru ends up at Sakura’s. It’s Konoha’s turn on the circuit to host the Chunin Exams and he’s worn himself ragged with preparations. He hasn’t had time to nap in over a week (each attempt interrupted by something or someone), he’s not sure of the last time he’s had three square meals, he hasn’t won a game of Shoji against his father in a month, and Shikamaru is  _ dragging.  _

It really must be evident in the way he carries himself, let alone looks, because when he crosses paths with Sakura after dropping off some requisition requests to the hospital, she takes one look at him and  _ frowns _ . 

It’s a frown that stops Shikamaru in his tracks and there’s an immediate response of wariness to  _ that  _ look. It’s one he’s all too familiar with - one his mother only wore when his father came home after working through the night as jounin commander. It wasn’t a look he had ever been on the receiving end of however, and he’s so thrown off guard he doesn’t even have time to process a reaction to the sudden grasp of a strong, yet slender hand wrapping around his arm. 

The next thing he knows, he’s been shunshined into what he recognizes as Sakura’s living room ...and the fact that he hadn’t even had time to react is something he finds troublesome and frankly, appalling. The pink haired kunoichi nudges him in the direction of her couch and sits him down on the cushions. He complies easily, mostly because he’s too tired to even  _ contemplate _ arguing.

_ “Nara Shikamaru, if you are not still sleeping by the time I get back this evening, I will have words with you.” _

( Shikamaru knows from the grapevine of gossip that weaves through Konoha that ‘words’ - when it comes to Sakura - is almost always held with a beat down on a training ground. And if it’s ‘words’ in the context of her work as a medic? It’s a beat down followed by bedrest under the scrutinizing eye of a woman who could demolish mountains with her bare fists in the sterile environment of the hospital. )

Before he can even form  _ some  _ sort of response, she shunshins out of the apartment with hardly a sound, and Shikamaru is alone. 

So, he reaches for a pillow, intending on laying down on the couch as ordered but as his eyes glide across the room, they catch on the way the afternoon sun lights up the carpet in front of the sliding door to her balcony. 

Yeah, no, the couch was not going to beat  _ that.   
  
_

_ - _

_   
_ He’s still dead asleep on the carpet hours later when she comes back - and it’s the most blissful, uninterrupted sleep he’s had in weeks. He only rouses from his slumber due to the click of a door opening, and then closing, and the unmistakable smell of Ichiraku’s that remind him that he has had nothing to eat or drink that day besides kami-damned break room coffee.

He takes pleasure in sharing a meal with someone at a leisurely pace for once.  
  


-  
  


When he mentions to her over their ramen that all of his spots that he once could escape to take a nap in had been intruded upon by either messengers, assistants, or his family — he somehow ends up heading back his own place with an open invitation to come take a nap whenever he needs one. 

He’s hesitant at first, to even accept the offer, because he has no wish to bring hoards of unfamiliar nin into her apartment in their quests to drag him back to his duties but he stops in his excuses when he sees an amused glint in her eyes, a sly smirk on her lips.

She pulls him from the kitchen table over to her bed room, and into her closet, a large walk-in which, with a snap of her fingers, reveals a complex seal matrix that had been concealed with a genjutsu. 

She says nothing at first, allowing him the time to take an appraising look at the seal. It has a flare to its design that he can confidently identify as Naruto’s work - it has a chaotic litany to it which boasts an unconventional symmetry of complex iterations that he knows would flummox anyone even slightly familiar with sealing. He’s no fuinjutsu master himself, but he’s familiar enough to make his own storage scrolls and exploding tags… but Naruto’s work is a beautiful nightmare. 

She laughs at the look of indignation on his face as he takes in the seal with limited success at reading the components of it. Fucking Uzumaki and their absurd sealing logic. 

He gathers enough that it's the security matrix for her apartment, and there’s a small nexus of mixed chakra signatures clustered at the center - people he presumes have been keyed into the wards. He recognizes one of them as Ino’s, another that’s unmistakably Naruto’s and there’s a couple others who, while not immediately recognizable he’s sure he could identify with time. 

She has him prick his finger with a kunai to add his blood & chakra signature to the nexus - a show of trust and openness that his thoughts barely have time to stutter over when she begins to describe a particular aspect of the seal.

“ _ I think you'll like this bit, _ ” she taps a section of the seal just above the center point with the various keyed chakra signatures, “ _ this is a walls in privacy seal, simply put,” _ she drags her finger down the connecting brushstrokes that connect to the heart of the seal. “ _ When any of the people keyed here are within the walls, your chakra signature will be bounced around different random locations in the village.”  _ She meets his eyes with a knowing grin, “ _ Anywhere except  _ here _. Seriously, Shika, it’s not like I’m even there during the day — Really, just come take a nap whenever you need it. Doctor’s orders, okay?” _

Did he just get prescribed nap time from the village’s head medic? He’s absolutely interpreting it as such.  
  


-  
  


And so, Shikamaru shamelessly sprawls over the sun spot in her living room for his naps - even when the Chunin Exams have gone and passed. He delights in the fact that his assistants and underlings in the hokage’s office grow more and more frustrated every time he sneaks away for some well deserved sleep - and he sends them blatant, shit-eating grins when he eventually returns, well rested for once and filled with a selfish mirth at the irritation on their faces.   
  


-  
  


He finds that during in between the late spring and early summer storms, there’s excellent opportunity for cloud watching amidst his naps on the floor in front of her balcony; it's a place where he can do it even on the days of sunny rain without getting drenched in water and grassy mud, when the clouds are at their best for cloud watching.  
  


-  
  


He sometimes ends his naps with a smoke on her balcony, and though he takes care to never leave a mess of ashes, one day he finds a small ashtray shaped like a cat taking a nap. He huffs a laugh when he sees it, a wry smile on his lips. He’s not even offended about it. So what if he likes napping in sun spots? Clearly cats have the right idea about that.  
  


-  
  


There’s one day he sleeps straight through the afternoon, evening  _ and  _ morning, and when he finally comes to, there’s a mug of coffee sitting on a small ceramic plate on the coffee table, still steaming, miraculously. It’s a point in the day he knows Sakura has long left for her shift, and his curiosity is satiated when he lifts the mug to find a seal inscribed on the saucer in Naruto’s distinctive script. It’s got some sort of everlasting heat seal to it and he makes a mental note to bother the nin for a set of his own the next time he’s in the village because  _ kami  _ if that ain’t genius.   
  


-  
  


Sakura is hardly ever there during the day, but sometimes he ends up taking his nap later than normal and wakes to the sounds of her returning from her rounds for the day. Sometimes she brings back food for them to share, and sometimes she returns earlier than normal, a heaviness to her shoulders and an unsteadiness to her steps that Shikamaru learns to associate with a day gone poorly at the hospital.

On those days she lays down next to him on the floor, eyes trailing on the shifting clouds. He never pushes her to talk on those days. Sometimes they simply lay with one another’s company in the shared silence. Sometimes she tells him quietly about the patient she couldn’t save.  _ Sometimes  _ she sobs into his shoulder, and he holds her gently without complaint nor hesitation, his fingers threading through her long hair as she clings to him, tears soaking right through the fabric of his shirt.  
  


-  
  


Sometimes, and though he will never admit it to anyone else,  _ he’s  _ the one having a good cry after having to deliver one too many body scrolls containing genin far, far too young to die on missions that never should have gone wrong—cradled in her arms in much a way as he has done for her, her soft hands carding through his own hair, rubbing soothing circles at his back—he doesn’t even complain when his hair ties disappear onto her own wrists.  
  


-   
  


Shikamaru knows, albeit at the back of his mind, that Sakura is sometimes involved with ANBU. He’d done a brief stint in their ranks himself before shifting gears to work directly under the hokage, and he knows the identifiers that one can find in paperwork to read between the lines. Sakura’s paperwork sometimes has those markers, and though it’s not frequent, it’s enough for a Nara to pick up on.

And really, it makes sense. Though Sakura has been working with the ANBU commander to get more active nin within the ranks adequately versed in enough medic ninjutsu to get their operatives home, there’s still far too few in number that are versed in field combat  _ and  _ field medic techniques in equal amounts to  _ not  _ be a liability on the field. Sakura was a heavy hitter that could fend for herself and fought and healed with a brutal efficiency that could not be matched easily. The fact was, a wet works squad assigned an S-rank mission chances of survival and returning in one piece was astronomically better if she was on the team. She was a resource in ANBU - and he was grateful beyond measure that she was only sent out when absolutely necessary — her work in village was invaluable to constantly put her at risk out on the field. 

One day he hops onto her balcony and makes to slide open the door, but pauses. Through the glass he sees Sakura curled around a small pillow on the floor where he usually takes his naps, where  _ they  _ sometimes take a nap. Her hair, quite long these days, is fanned around her, is let loose from the braid she’s been keeping it in lately.

He’s peeved all but for a moment -- it is after all, her place — but the fondness he feels as he takes her in wavers into concern he doesn’t bother to mask. There’s exhaustion on her face even in sleep, a tightness to the way she’s curled around a pillow on the floor. He hasn’t seen Sakura in village at all for a couple days, nor signs of her returning to her apartment, ...and Sakura is wearing some of the standard issue ANBU under armour (which he can tell Ino has gotten her hands on at some point to customize the fit to Sakura’s specifications). The fact that she has yet to change into her civilian clothes is all too telling. 

He frowns, and considers the fact that she’s probably had a trying few days. Yeah, the floor probably wasn’t the best place for a good sleep for her right now. 

She doesn’t even twitch at the sound of the door sliding open and shut as Shikamaru steps inside. A good sign (hopefully) that she probably wouldn’t jump him on sheer instinct and reflex as some ANBU were wont to do right after a mission. Regardless, he’s careful to subtly expand his chakra should her subconscious react otherwise. 

He plucks the well-worn blanket he knows she’s partial to that drapes over the back of the couch, and wraps it around her. She must have showered before crashing on the floor like that, because her hair is still damp and he can smell the subtle fragrance of the shampoo she uses when she’s in village. 

She doesn’t stir as he carefully cradles her into his arms. Except as he makes his way down the hallway to her bedroom, he swears she almost burrows closer to his chest in his arms.

He settles her into her bed as gently as he can, tucking her in as best he can manage. Shikamaru softly brushes her hair from her face, and turns to leave when one of her hands unexpectedly catches his fingers and tugs. 

” _ Stay, _ ” she says so softly he barely hears her. He turns, and those jade green eyes are barely open, yet filled with a vulnerability and longing he can’t find in himself to refuse.

And so he stays.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading <3


End file.
